Work Text:
It was odd, to not have to really worry anymore. Simon was far from used to the feeling, even as the weeks passed by.
There was no more anxiety to be had about Blaise or Patricia or law enforcement tracking him down. No more worrying about if the mask he had so carefully constructed had slipped, if Knightley had figured it out, and thereby if the body double had figured it out.
Even the nightmares had lessened. The nights when he went without them, Simon dreamt of nothing. In a strange way, in a way he could not explain, in a way that was not quite negative, it unsettled him more than the nightmares could.
To prison, of course. Dogen had said, That place will be our home. Simon had heard his words clearly, even if his mind had been foggy and panicked. They were confusing. They comforted him, though, in a way that Simon knew was childish to feel.
Home. Our home.
Simon did not know what home meant; not really. Vague blurs of plain walls and oven timers and booming laughter and now sickeningly sweet tastes rest on his tongue, but the haze never clears enough for him to decipher any of it. He had spent years of his life yearning for those times. For what he would've called home.
Snow crunching under his feet or wet grass on his ankles, bunk beds and monkey bars and cold winters and hotter summers. The orphanage was home, once. That hadn't lasted forever. It never could have, he knew. Anything positive from it was tainted by the cowardice and the thirst for power of figures he had thought he could trust.
Landlord white walls of an apartment he never felt motivated enough to decorate, or a plain room reeking of literal circus animals that was filled with knick-knacks Simon knew did not belong to him but he rarely bothered to return. The places Simon lived in as an adult had not been places of comfort, not places he felt necessarily relieved to be in after a long day.
Truthfully, loneliness has always followed Simon around like a ghost, something he can never get rid of.
Faint memories, always slipping out of his grasp, of coming home from school to an empty house, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Memories he chose not to touch in the first place, of sitting on a swing set, watching other children play, as wary eyes burn into the back of his head.
After a while, he conceded it as being a necessary evil. He had no one he could confide in; not in a way that mattered. He could certainly not tell Knightley. He could not tell any of his colleagues at the circus. Even in his letters to Dogen, he couldn't be fully honest. Cryptic words and vague phrasing were needed in order to slip past those wary eyes Simon had once feared, but then just hated.
Simon didn't remember what it was like, to feel relief. To not worry. To feel safe, even. Neither did he understand what it meant to have a home.
Metal bars. Dimmed lights. The weight of a hound on his lap, wooden carvings Simon can never quite get the hang of, games of chess with long silences.
He knew, to most, that it would be far from comforting. To most, living in prison would be simply dehumanizing. Frightening. They would be right, in an objective sense, but Simon still found himself unable to agree.
That place will be our home, Dogen had said.
Simon knows he can be stubborn in his beliefs. But, he thinks, with a feeling of resignation in a way that was comforting, that he finally may be beginning to understand.